Ann, how did the Indian actress (of Slumdog Millionaire fame) do? Many Bollywood actors have tried to make it in Hollywood and have failed. Aishwarya Rai is probably jealous but she never had it in her, no acting and abysmal interpersonal and communication skills.

One good thing the movie does: helps increase exposure of the role of heredity in IQ. The Blank Slate meme ( and untruth) must be undermined if we are going to put in effective solutions to society's problems.

Some of the footage from the London riots when young males were leaping up on counters to wrest flat screen TVs from walls reminded me of one of the scenes from the Planet of the Apes trailer. And, before anyone accuses me of going all racist, the guys in the London video were all "hoodied" up and I have no idea if they were white, black or purple.

"And this was as far as action films go a little too children and female oriented for my taste."

Huh! Several female friends have been enthusing about this movie in my FB feed. Meanwhile, men and women in my Twitter feed are enthusing about Point Blank. Which only reminds me of Point Break, a movie I enthuse about.

I find it interesting that some commenters are so bent on negativity that they find it necessary to comment on a movie they haven't seen. I saw it last night with my 23 year old son, and we both liked it. John Lithgow should receive an award (supporting actor?) for the way he played the Alzheimer affected father. For me it was what made the movie believable. I can see why to an "action film fan" it might have been seen as ho-hum. As it was about much more than that. I felt like it was a pretty seamless tie in to the original POTA movie.

actually my favorite scene was when you see all the apes more or less standing at attention in their exercise yard the morning after Cesar worked his magic. I was as though they had eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and had become "one of us"

I followed the link hoping to see a newer, more revealing trailer for Rise, but I was disappointed. Same as before. It's a good synopsis of the film, which is bad if one likes subtlety of plot. The one thing I find admirable is the advanced CGI techniques which allow Andy Serkis to project emotion and character so effectively through that digital skin.

The visit to YouTube wasn't fruitless, however. On the same page there's a link to a film trailer which promotes something that may be worth the price of a ticket: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I avoided seeing in 3D but now wish I hadn't. It was obvious that everything was set up for 3D. 3D can be an ordeal to watch, and it doesn't really look good artistically, but if things are done right it can be great fun. This movie seems well designed for 3D.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has most the heavy hitters in British cinema, including Colin Firth (lately of The King's Speech) and the chameleon-like Gary Oldman as George Smiley (Oldman looks so much like Michael Redgrave in the trailer that I was really perplexed as to who I was looking at)

The source novel is deviously plotted, and dramatis personae is vast and varied. When the BBC serialized the story for TV in 1979 They needed nearly seven hours. Whether a two-hour screenplay can do it justice remains to be seen. To be fair the BBC serial was incredibly slow-paced, in the opening scene the director used ten minutes to get a bunch of disheveled chain smokers into a conference room to discus the merits of Percy Allenine's Merlin material. (The BBC style has really changed over the decades, from sleepily languid to unwatchably frenetic with no happy medium in between)

To be fair the BBC serial was incredibly slow-paced, in the opening scene the director used ten minutes to get a bunch of disheveled chain smokers into a conference room to discus the merits of Percy Allenine's Merlin material

The BBC mini series certainly was a faithful adaptation, so much so that even at seven hours, you really had to have read the book to understand what the hell was going on. This new one will be dumbed down a great deal, I'm sure.

Gallup has Obama's approval rating down to 39%, with a disapproval rating of 54%. Drudge links to an L.A. Timesarticle about it, complete with a picture of Obama with the caption "President Obama leaves the Oval Office on Saturday on his way to play golf at Andrews Air Force Base." And that's the story in a nutshell: America sees Nero golfing while America burns. Look at the look on his face: He looks like someone who is annoyed at being stalked by the paparazzi. These days, every time you turn around, you see a picture of Obama looking like he just sucked on a lemon.

Reminds me of some song lyrics:

I don't like the look on your face,I don't like the cut of your jib,I don't like the things you saidOr the things you did.I don't like the folks you pal around withOr what you've done to the place,But most of all,I don't like the look on your face.

Of course, they were singing about Bush, but I feel the same way about Obama as they did about Dubya.

I saw all the POTA movies when I was a kid but had zero interest in the marky mark remake, but I kind of want to see this one. (although I probably won't any time soon, as I seldom go to movies)

I know it seems like every action picture is 3D-ified nowadays, but Rise wasn't one of them.

Good! I hate all this 3d. Went looking for a new tv this weekend and I dont' want them to ruin the look of the normal movies/tv shows with 3d. I am in love with the smart tv's, though I couldn't get a good answer from the guy at best buy about how well they would stream live sports from espn.

"Let's see: over 300 million humans in US, over 6 billion on earth. How fast would a seed group of sentient apes need to breed before . . . ?"

Well, I had assumed the whole story would unfold in 2 hours, but it turned out that there's got to be at least one sequel to get us up to the point where the original movie began.

Now, I too assumed that the ape would need to impregnate a lot of female apes (in the zoo, etc.) but there was no ape sex or even sexuality at all in this movie. (Unrealistic!) The smartening up was done with drugs. And the groundwork was laid that these drugs were going to kill human beings.

So, in the original movie we were led to think that humans had destroyed themselves (with, I think, nuclear weapons) and then later, the apes evolved.

In this new telling of the story, humans begin with an idea of curing Alzheimer's disease and using apes for experimentation. Then the drug makes apes smart and kills humans. Kind of more well-meaning mishaps by humans than the stuff that made Heston want to "damn you all to hell."

I saw the this about 5years ago, and the main thing I remember is Alec Guinness more or less constantly wiping his steamed-up glasses, probably in an effort to look even more profound.

The other effort by John Lecarre, The Russia House with Sean Connery I watched with some slightly stuck-up friends when I was much younger. After, none of us could admit that we'd had no idea what the hell was going on in it.

And yes, Synova, that's the fear du jour, as evidenced by the preview we saw for the epidemic movie coming out next month. I think it was Contagion, but we've seen that movie before, stuff like Outbreak and the beginning of the miniseries of Stephen King's The Stand.

Given Hollywood's obsession this summer with hostile space aliens, you'd think that people were more likely to be killed by bug-eyed monsters than bacterial bugs, but you'd be wrong...

Saw the movie Saturday night, and kinda enjoyed it. If I were a PTA purist, I would have pooh-poohed the whole rescripting of Caesar's origin thing, but all-in-all,not the worst way to spend a few hours.

James Franco, incidentally, is still a rotten actor.

John Lithgow finally landed a a role (as an Alzheimer's patient) which fits his skills.

The Indian Chick (I keep forgetting her name) was almost wholly unnecessary, and I get the impression that women would not go to see this film without a sappy animal lover/romantic interest angle.for

Almost like why Liv Tyler was included to fill up empty space in LOTR, I figure.

Andy Serkis is becoming typecast as your go-to-guy for CGI stand-ins that crawl on all fours: first Gollum, and now, Caesar. Does anyone know if Serkis has done anything else, and if so, was it any good?

And yet, it was still entertaining, and you found yourself rooting for the apes. Go figure.

I saw POTA last weekend and I wish I could get my 2 hours back. If Franco's acting was only bad that would have been an improvement and the Indian lady's part made no sense even if it had been used to move the plot along. Though it is good to see Harry Potter alumni getting work.

Matthew: Andy Serkis was Kong in the Peter Jackson remake - the one almost single-handedly ruined by Jack Black.

Been devouring the extended cut LOTR box set. Ridiculous amount of special features (3 DVDs per movie!), all of it great stuff. One of the interesting revelations is that Serkis was originally hired just for voice work, and was expecting about three weeks worth of work, instead of the six months in the "gimp suit" it turned into.